If You Swear Loudly In One Massachusetts Town, You’ll Get Fined

This news makes me want to both chuckle and hang my head in shame. A town in Massachusetts, the state from whence I hail, has decided to issue tickets to people who cuss loudly in public. The town is Middleborough, and the way it went down is that residents themselves voted 183-50 in favor of the proposal at a town meeting last night. Offenders will be slapped with a $20 fine.

On one hand, this is perfect, because Massachusetts is in some ways still very Puritanical (the town I grew up in didn’t sell liquor, for instance). But on the other hand, let’s be real: Who swears more than Massholes? Who punctuates their sentences with the word “fuckin’”? It’s not Southern belles, I assure you.